Wild and Crazy Adventures in Masoala

One of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers came up from his site up in the highlands of Madagascar to visit me on the coast a few weeks ago, and we went on quite the adventure through the SAVA region down into “Parc National Masoala,” ending up in Maroansetra. It all started with a text message I sent to Tom. I had been wanting to hike through Masoala for the longest time, as it’s so close to where I live, it’s the largest expanse of protected rain forest in Madagascar and it’s a good chance to catch a glimpse of the elusive and strange-looking Aye-Aye lemur in its natural habitat.

Because it’s so heavily forested and on a peninsula on Madagascar’s eastern coastal peninsula, Masoala also gets the most annual rainfall of any other part of the country. I’d heard that the hike was quite long and challenging and involved camping in the woods for a week, so I knew Tom was my best bet for a hiking partner, as he’s the only Peace Corps friend I know in country who was truly interested, capable, reliable and crazy enough to be up for the challenge. Since I knew I only have six months left at my site, and Tom’s school year working as an English teacher had just finished up, I thought I’d shoot him a message to see if he was still interested. Little did I know that this would be the seed that blossomed into the wettest, muddiest and most grueling physical challenge I have ever subjected myself to (and that’s saying something, considering I’ve hiked up Kilimanjaro and done quite a bit of outdoor climbing and hiking in Kentucky, Tennessee and Oregon).

To my surprise, Tom responded back and actually bought a plane ticket to Sambava for early July, so I quickly got in contact with a guide through Antalaha’s national park office, ANGAP. We set up a hike starting from Cap Est, the Eastern most point in Madagascar, through the forest to Maroansetra for a total of seven days and six nights. Tom arrived right after our SAVA regional Peace Corp volunteer weekend meeting in Sambava (which was a lot of fun now that we have 11 volunteers in the region), and we headed up to my old site, Antsirabe Nord, since I had an AIDS awareness festival planned there for that evening.

Unfortunately the AIDS festival was kind of a bust, as most of the local CEG (junior high) students who were supposed to be involved with the project had already gone home to their villages for the summer and there was a big soccer match 10km up the road that afternoon that I had been unaware of. Even though we walked around the whole town advertising free HIV testing at the clinic, no really came to get tested. PSI’s cinemobile came in the evening, though, and most people were back in town by then, so we had a great turnout for their outdoor film projection about STIs and HIV/AIDS. PSI does a great job of rallying up the crowd with music and announcements over their loud sound system, and all of their health education films are produced by local actors and film makers in Tana in the local Malagasy language. The crowd seemed to really enjoy the film and hopefully absorbed some good information through watching the movie and reading the pamphlets on HIV/AIDS and STIs that we had distributed earlier that afternoon.

That night we stayed at my friends’ Nana and Qaddafin’s house in town, since I live in a different village now, and no longer have a house in Antsirabe Nord. They were great hosts, and they had a lot of fun talking with Tom, as his Malagasy dialect from the highlands is so different from our way of speaking on the coast. We had a wonderful dinner and went to bed early since we had plans to hike the mountain, “Andrangohitra,” just outside of town the next morning. We had made sure to get special permission from the mayor to climb the mountain the day beforehand, so after a light breakfast of coffee and Malagasy rice flour bread, we set off with Nana’s brother as our guide.

It was quite a steep hour and a half hike up the mountain, with lots of scrambling over rocks and fighting against clawing thorns, branches and fallen trees. The pace of the hike made it especially hard, as all the guys were really strong and in shape and were practically running up the mountain, forcing me to huff and puff to keep up with them. I didn’t slow down or ask for many breaks though, because Nana’s brother kept giving me a hard time for being the weak little white girl, and I didn’t want to satisfy his preconceived notions.

After conquering “Veloma Baba,” a steep, rocky section that would be scary and painful if one were to slip and tumble down it (hence the name “Goodbye Daddy” in Malagasy), we reached the new Telma cell phone tower, standing quite tall in all its grandeur and quietly running off of current from eight or ten large solar panels. We gazed out over the valleys and surrounding mountains, and were able to spot the main road winding south towards Samabava, the river heading east towards Antanambao Doud and the coast and the towns of Tsarahitra and Ampanefena stretching north along the road towards Vohemar. It was really neat to get a glimpse of the Indian Ocean from there and to have a bird’s-eye view of the town where I had spent a year of my life.

After a short break, we headed up to the actual peak of the mountain, probably another 20 or 30 meters up. Unfortunately the last few meters up to the viewpoint were one steep, smooth boulder with no footholds and one dried out branch of bamboo considerately propped up against the rock to offer handholds for scaling up to the top. There was a steep crevasse dropping 20 meters down from the base of the boulder, so my slight fear of heights overcame me, and I surrendered any hope of going further as visions of me slipping off the rock and tumbling into the abyss played over and over in my head.

Tom, Qaddafin and Nana’s brother took off their shoes and scrambled to the top to enjoy the view as I waited down below. I asked Tom to get some good pictures with his camera for me. I was a little nervous for the return journey down the steep slope of the mountain, but it actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We made it successfully back down “Veloma Baba” and down to the base of the mountain, past the rice paddies and back into town. As we dropped off Nana’s brother, their mom invited us in for a chat. We got a chance to see a large basket of green vanilla beans she had recently harvested out in her fields, and she promised to send me home with some of the final product when it was time for me to leave in December. Then she gave me a parting gift of a huge 1.5L Eau-Vive bottle of sakay (really spicy little peppers preserved in salt and vinegar), which is perhaps one of the best “voandalanas” I have ever received—typical wonderful Malagasy hospitality. After a short rest and a delicious lunch at Nana’s with some of the “sakay” from her mother, we went for a walk down to the river that winds around Anstirabe Nord. We hung out for a bit and took some pictures, and then it was time for us to head back to my new village so I could pack up for our trip through Masoala.

When we got to my village, everyone was at the “bazary,” watching as the doctor installed the TV for the community’s evening viewing of the Malagasy national news. It’s really great that the solar panel was successfully funded, purchased and installed, because the community can now use it to run the community TV and satellite for the national news every evening and to power the lights at the clinic in case there are any medical emergencies or women coming to give birth at night. The next morning, after some last minute packing and quick good-byes to the neighbors and my counterpart, we headed off to Antalaha.

The bush taxi rides down to Sambava and Antalaha were surprisingly quick and efficient that day, so we were able to arrive in Antalaha in time to have a late lunch. Then we went to visit a fellow volunteer living in Antalaha. After a walk on the beach and a long chat, we had a great home-made Italian meal complements of our host. Even the pasta was home-made (yes, he has a pasta machine); quite a character with his strong Italian roots and heavy Boston accent, and our fellow volunteer was such a wonderful host.

The next morning we arrived at the ANGAP office a little after 7am to meet our guide. Of course the office wasn’t open yet, but the guide was at least waiting for us as he had promised over the phone. He promptly left us sitting outside with his teenage daughter as he went to fetch his tent and his boss to open up the office. After about twenty minutes, the ANGAP folks magically appeared, and we stepped into a dingy, empty room except for a few posters of lemurs plastered on the walls and some moldy chairs and a table sitting in the center. The guide quickly went over with us our “programme” for the next week we would be spending together hiking through Masoala. Tom and I were a bit nervous, as the schedule sounded a little more intense than our initial impression. The guide assured us that we would be able to complete the guide in seven days, even if we weren’t hiring any porters to help us carry our stuff.

After paying our 1000 Ariary entrance fee for the park and a small advance to our guide for provisions, we headed off to the market to purchase food for our trek. We would be planning to eat in small villages along the way for the most part, but there were one or two nights that we’d be camping in the forest and would have to prepare our own food. If it were up to Tom or me, we probably would have just relied on peanuts, bread and cliff bars, but Malagasies have to have their rice every day. We did actually buy a lot of bread, and then some lentils, peanuts, ginger, garlic, salt, oil and spoons. We planned to buy rice and fish further down the road near Cap Est. We also brought some peanut butter, honey and a few other snacks with us, and the guide brought along his “vilany” (rice cooking pot). Then we headed to the taxi brousse station for Cap Est.

Unfortunately not too many people travel to Cap Est, since the road is bad and the vehicles are even worse. If you don’t catch the “premier line” that leaves at 6am, you’re in for a long wait until the next vehicle fills up. When we got to the vehicle stand, we loaded our stuff on the next car heading out and gave my phone number to the driver so we could walk around for the next few hours until it was time to leave. After taking a stroll along the beach and watching a huge production of people setting vanilla out to dry in the sun on the field outside the local CEG, we headed back to the taxi stand, but it still wasn’t ready to go. We decided to walk on down the road heading towards Cap Est and have the car pick us up along the way. After a couple kilometers we came to a gendarme checkpoint, so we decided to sit and wait for the car there. The gendarmes were actually quite nice, and they had fun practicing a little English with us. One of them was originally from Maroansetra, so we were able to ask him a little bit about our final destination as well.

It was already past noon by the time the car picked us up, and we were finally on our way to Cap Est. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the road wasn’t actually as bad as everyone kept saying it was. It wasn’t paved, but it was relatively flat and dry since the rainy season had ended about a month ago. There were some rocks and a few hills, but the main problem was the condition of the vehicle. I have been in some pretty janked up cars during my time here in Madagascar, but this was one of the worst. Everything on the dashboard had been completely stripped out, including the radio, speedometer, odometer, fuel gauge and ignition key. The driver had to hotwire the car every time he wanted to start it. The gas tank had been reconfigured so that the tube ran from under the hood to the leg space of the passenger seat, where it fed into a large, plastic, yellow jerry can that had once been used to store cooking oil. The lid of the “gas tank” wasn’t properly sealed, so each time we went over a bump or a rock, poor Tom got splashed on the legs with gasoline. At least there was a second full can next to it, so we had plenty of fuel for the trip. The driver seemed less than concerned about the spillage inside the cab, as he casually lit his third cigarette of the trip.

We were no more than 10 or 20km outside of Antalaha when our vehicle inevitable broke down. By this time it was evident that our guide had a restless streak or really enjoyed walking, because he hopped out of the back and asked us if we’d hike ahead with him until the car was fixed and could pick us up further down the road. I figured we’d be doing a lot of walking the next few days anyway, and there really was no point in sitting and watching the driver and his buddies fuss with God knows what under the hood, so the three of us headed on down the road. I was surprised at how long the stretches of quiet, uninhabited land were. There was already quite a lot of coastal forest and swampy areas with only a few small villages spaced out along the way. We came across a beautiful, deserted beach at low tide that stretched on for miles with a few beached canoes scattered along the shore. After about twenty minutes we heard the car sputtering along and headed back to the road to hop in.

The car broke down several more times for stretches of thirty minutes to an hour, making what should have been a two hour journey a very frustrating and long four and a half hour trip. We finally reached a gendarme stop by the ferry we were supposed to catch across the river and into Cap Est a little before dusk. They were primarily stationed at that point in order to catch rosewood smugglers coming out of the forest and up the river, transporting their precious cargo up towards Antalaha. They also periodically checked the paperwork of drivers who transported passengers and cargo back and forth from Cap Est to Antalaha. Unfortunately, the last ferry had already left for the day, so we had to unload at the river, cross in a very unstable canoe and walk the five remaining kilometers to our destination for the evening. We ended up staying in what seemed like the outskirts of Cap Est, where a small enclave was set up for guides who work the Cap Est to Maroansetra route. After a dinner of sautéed octopus and rice, we turned in for the night.

The next morning we headed out to the small protected forest surrounding Cap Est to see some carnivorous plants. About half way into the circuit through the park, I started noticing that a small cloud of mosquitoes was swarming from behind and in front of me. They started biting relentlessly at my ankles, so I quickly rolled down my pants and we started to hightail it out of there. At one point the guide stopped us to insist that we take a picture of the famous carnivorous plant of Cap Est. He was very adamant that I get a photo of the plant, so I quickly pulled out my camera and snapped a picture of it while the guide swatted at my ankles with a leafy branch. Then we walked out of the park as quickly as we could as my ankles started to itch and swell up. At one point, I think I smacked three mosquitoes that landed simultaneously on my leg. I probably would have elected to skip the walk if I had known that we would be going into a mosquito forest just to take a picture of one plant.

By this time we were both pretty frustrated with our guide and were ready to get out of Cap Est and head out on the path towards Maroansetra. We had already committed to a short snorkeling excursion however, so we packed up our things, changed into swimsuits and had a quick breakfast of rice and fish before heading out to the beach. Optimistically I hoped that the saltwater would dry out the mosquito bites and squelch the itching. While the beach and the deserted island we canoed out to were quite pretty, the snorkeling was less than impressive. Most of the coral was either dead or infested with stinging sea urchins, and the saltwater was actually making my mosquito bites sting, so we swam around for a total of about ten minutes and then headed back to shore so we could hike the 5km back to the river crossing in time to catch a “lakana” (canoe) downstream to our starting point of the hike through Masoala.

After the guide picked up some fresh fish from the local fishermen at the beach, we headed out. We reached the river around noon and had a quick lunch at a Malagasy “hotely” before hopping on a “lakana” manned by a very buff, young Malagasy boatman. Aside from gazing at the surrounding forest, charming small villages along the way and other “lakanas” drifting by with loads of rice harvests and passengers, it was pleasant just to watch and admire the strength of the young boatman as he thrust the “lakana” pole with both arms through the water down to the riverbed in a slow, repetitive, fluid motion.

About half way through our boat journey, the skies darkened, and large threatening storm clouds poured cold rain down on us for the remainder of the trip. With raincoats and banana leaves as our only defense against the elements, our belongings got quite soaked, and remained that way for the rest of the week, producing a lovely, moldy stench. A little before dusk, the rain finally petered off just in time for our disembarkation. Since we hadn’t caught our canoe until after lunchtime, we didn’t make it to our intended destination for the evening, although the guide had assured us that we would have no trouble catching a canoe, even if we hung around Cap Est for the morning. So our boatman dropped us off at a village about 10km further up the path than intended, as it was already getting close to dusk, and he still had to make his return trip back to Cap Est.

Our campsite for the evening was on a soccer field at the fringes of a little village called “Sahafary,” as a group of kids crowded around to see what the two “vazaha” and their small, elderly Malagasy guide with a strange-looking circular pack strapped to his back would do next. After unloading our things, we started putting the tents up. The guide’s was a green, pop-out tent that takes two minutes to set up, because it’s made with one flexible, foldable, circular wire frame. It was kind of convenient, but very funny-looking, especially when folded up into its circular shape and stuffed into its circular green sack…probably came out of some fad from the ‘80s in the States and then was donated to Goodwill and eventually shipped over to Africa. The shape of the tent folded up was kind of like a satellite dish, and, when strapped onto our guide’s back along with the shape and the green color, was reminiscent of a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” costume.

After setting up tents, the guide went off to look for firewood and to fetch water. We chatted with the kids for a while, who got a kick out of the fact that we knew how to speak Malagasy. I asked if any of them had ever seen a “fosa” in the woods before, and one or two of them actually claimed that they did, though one can never be sure how truthful little kids are about those kinds of things. Eventually their mothers called all the kids home for dinner and we could finally relax around the fire and enjoy the rice and fresh fish (re-freshened off the side of the “lakana” on or way down the river) our guide had cooked over the fire. We ate off of banana leaves so we wouldn’t have to worry about dishes, and then had a nice pineapple that someone in the village had sold us for 500 Ariary.

We were grateful that the rain had stopped in time for us to set up camp and have a dry dinner, but it unfortunately started up again at 3am and drizzled on into the morning. We were dismayed to find that a wet tent was a great source of anxiety for our guide, and for the next several days he continued to grumble on about how his tent would never dry out since it kept raining every night. That morning, he delayed our start until 7:30am even though we were behind schedule, just so he could let his tent dry out for a while.

We got off to a wet, slippery, muddy start that would turn into a common theme over the next few days. The sun actually came out and stayed out from mid-morning on, but the path was quite muddy from the recent rains and the bordering rice paddies and streams. Though we had not yet entered the park, the surrounding mountains, forests, rice fields, quaint villages, rivers and streams make the path quite scenic.

I was enjoying the gorgeous surroundings, but poor Tom, who was carrying a pack twice the size of mine and who unwisely decided to wear old running shoes with no traction, was not doing so well on the steep, muddy slopes. Only an hour into the hike, he had already slipped and fallen a dozen times, so the guide suggested he try wearing his plastic, Malagasy “jelly” sandals. Though his sandals had seen better days (they were almost a year old and the heels were cracking off in the back) they still provided more traction than his sneakers. The guide started off with hiking boots, but soon went barefoot, as we crossed many small streams and oversized puddles and were mucking through several feet of mud at times. I was nervous about my “Tevas” giving me blisters, but they weren’t bothering me so far and were serving their purpose of providing me some traction and allowing me to wade through the water while protecting the bottoms of my feet.

Around mid-morning we reached the village where we were supposed to have slept the past night if our canoe had been able to take us the whole way before dark. It was quite a large village with a market and a very friendly woman who had been to secondary school in Antalaha and could speak really good French and a surprising amount of English. She apparently knew some German and Italian as well. She was so excited to have the chance to talk with us in English, so we chatted with her while our guide snacked on some fried cassava. Then we stocked up on rice and headed back out on the trail.

About an hour later we stopped to lunch on some peanut butter and honey sandwiches on the beach by the river. I noticed that our guide’s snack of choice was butter sandwiches, as I watched in disbelief as he loaded four, large heaping spoonfuls of margarine onto a small chunk of bread. After sterilizing some water from the river with my handy UV pen, we set off on the trail again. Our guide forewarned us that we had quite a long way to go and lots of rocks, sand and river crossing over and over again for the next several hours.

At a few hours in, the river crossings still hadn’t gotten too bad, but the sand and sharp rocks getting trapped between my wet sandal straps and the back of my heels was aggravating my feet. Sections of the trail hugged steep, rocky hillsides that steeply dropped off into the raging rapids below. The skin irritation and frequent fear of slipping off the trail into the swift-moving river was mentally draining, and by now, the weight of the pack and climbing up and down the rocky trail was physically exhausting.

By mid afternoon, we had entered “Parc National Masoala,” and the grandeur of the thickly forested mountains and hillsides gave me a mental boost. Although it was hard to tear my eyes from the challenging terrain in front of my feet, I periodically made an effort to pick my head up and gaze around at the pristine beauty of the natural, wild environment that encompassed us. As it was early in the tourist season (or guide informed us that we were the first ones on the trail this year) and most of what we were hiking through was protected forest area, we frequently had the woods all to ourselves. Only about every couple hours or so, we would come across a few Malagasies traveling from one village to another that bordered the park.

By late afternoon we still hadn’t reached our destination, so our guide called out to a boy washing clothes on the other side of the river to ask how much longer we had to the next village. “Mbola lavitrE!” (still far!) he exclaimed in Malagasy, and my heart sank as I thought of my now irritated heels and sore shoulders. After about another hour, we came to a clearing with a patch of forest to the side. “Lemur” our guide casually announces as he pointed to a tree on the right. We looked over in that direction and sure enough there was a black lemur perched on a branch staring back at us. We watched each other for a few seconds and then moved on as we still had some ground to cover before dark.

At the tail end of dusk we arrived at a small village where we would camp for the night. I was exhausted from fording rivers, scrambling over boulders and wading through mud. A few of the rivers had been quite difficult to cross, with depths reaching up to our hips and swift rapids. The guide had to hold my hand and cross with me for several of them, so I wouldn’t slip and fall in with my pack. Add to that all the mosquito bites on my lower legs from pulling up my pants to cross the rivers, and it was one exhausting day.

We quickly set up the tents in the light drizzle and then I changed and laid down in my bag while the guide fussed with the plans for cooking rice. If it was up to Tom and me, we would have just eaten some bread or cliff bars and gone to bed. But Malagasies MUST have rice or they won’t make it through the day. About an hour later the guide fetched us from our tents and we dined on some very salty fish over boiled rice for dinner. Then we went back to our tents and slept until daybreak.

The next morning we had tried to get an earlier start, although with the guide wanting to dry out his tent again and having to heat up left over rice and fish for breakfast, we didn’t end up leaving until after 7. Every village or group of Malagasies we passed that morning had the pleasure of hearing a sales pitch from our guide for pink, liquid medicine in small plastic packets. He was marketing it as a topical cure-all for back pain, tooth pain, leg pain, neck pain, menstrual cramps, etc. We weren’t quite sure what the actual substance was, but Tom suspected it was probably some kind of numbing agent or analgesic. At first I was surprised at how many of these impoverished villagers were willing to fork over the considerable investment of 1000 Ariary for a small packet of medicine from some stranger passing through their community. No one at my site back up north every buys the medicine that traveling peddlers try to sell them, but then I realized that’s probably because my community has an amazing, hard working nurse staffing the clinic that’s located right in our village.

Tom and I asked the guide where the nearest medical facility was from this point in our hike, and he answered that either the clinic in Antalaha or Maroansetra were people’s best bet for care in case of a medical emergency. We had just traveled by foot, boat and car for a full two days to get to this point from Antalaha, and Maroansetra was still even further off at the other end, so I realized that these people were probably desperate for any type of medicine they could get their hands on, even if it was something to delay or lessen the pain for the two day journey until they were able to reach the nearest health care provider.

I then thought of all the mothers and pregnant women who were probably living out in these villages and asked if there were any knowledgeable midwives in the area. One of the locals we were temporarily walking with responded, much to my relief, that there were quite a few experienced and knowledgeable midwives in the area. I just hope a few of them had some kind of training at some point on proper hygiene and recognizing signs of emergencies or complications during childbirth. It wasn’t until twenty minutes later slipping over the wet rocks along the riverbank that the extreme remoteness of our present location and complete lack of cell-phone reception made me anxiously wonder what would happen if I myself fell and broke a wrist or ankle or something worse along this hike. I made a mental note to myself to be extremely careful.

Shortly thereafter, we were walking across the top of some smooth boulders, when I slipped on the edge of a puddle and went down hard, landing on my left arm and hip. I was nervous to move or sit up, worried to discover that I had broken something. The guide and Tom apprehensively waited in silence as they helped me sit up. Very luckily, I wasn’t in any pain, and we walked a few meters before taking a short break so I could sit and collect myself.

We hiked for several more hours, crossing more streams and sandy riverbanks until we stumbled across a quiet spot next to the river, shaded by a tall, beautiful tree. After more peanut butter sandwiches, a few pictures and a short rest, we trekked on, crossing stream after stream and entering into deeper forest. At one point in our river crossings, we met a young Malagasy couple heading back the opposite direction after what seemed like a picnic they had taken at the river. Then we came upon an older, toothless man carrying a few supplies on a stick over his shoulder and donning a thin, stretched out purple sweater, ripped up shorts and a faded baseball cap. He was heading out alone along the train in the same direction as us, but obviously at a much quicker pace.

Since we were planning to camp in the middle of the forest that night and the next village in that direction wasn’t for another full day’s hike, our guide asked the man where he was headed. He was planning to camp in the forest on his way to the next town we were headed to as well, so after checking out his ID card to make sure he wasn’t a shady character, the guide invited him to camp with us and share our company and fire for the evening. The lone traveler agreed and so we hiked on, climbing up what would be the steepest path I have every hiked on.

Before I even realized it, the path separated from the river and wound up and around into the forested mountainside above. We took high step after high step with our heavy packs, grabbing onto tree branches and roots for support. There were many steep, slippery and muddy sections I had to claw my way up. At one point I almost broke down with frustration, pure exhaustion and fear of slipping down over the sheer mountainside into the thorny valley below. Meanwhile, our surprisingly agile guide skipped up the trail with his satellite dish-shaped tent strapped to his back, and Tom—probably the most in-shape Peace Corps volunteer in country—powered up the steep slopes, pausing impatiently from time to time behind me as I panted and shakily struggled to haul myself and my pack up this ridiculous excuse for a trail. We stopped for a breather only once, as we came to a viewpoint looking out from the forest onto the opposite cliff-side, where a giant waterfall spilled over the top and down into the valley below.

“You stop to take picture. Nice place for picture. Here! Here!” the guide demanded. I was just grateful for the rest, as Tom pulled out his camera to capture the beauty of the scenic viewpoint. Only as we were about to leave did I notice that there was a wriggling, black leech biting the back of my pointer finger. I quickly flicked it off and then looked down to realize there was one sucking on my toe as well. I squirmed as I pulled it off and the blood pooled out. It must have been feasting on my toe for a while, because I had to squeeze it out of there and the blood didn’t stop running for quite a long time.

As we moved on, the trail seemed to get impossibly steeper and steeper until I freaked out a little bit, clinging to the mountainside. I had to take a minute to calm myself down and overcome my fear of slipping and tumbling all the way back down the trail into the valley below. I tried my best not to look down behind me as I pulled myself up the slope and attempted to comfort myself with the idea that Tom might be able to catch me or at least slow my fall if I did by chance happen to slip off the trail. Finally we reached the top and were able to catch our breaths and look out across the valley. It was at this point that I seriously wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into.

We snapped some pictures and then hiked ten more minutes along the mountaintop over to our campsite by the water that fed into the grand waterfall below, which we had looked out on from halfway up the mountain earlier that afternoon. After setting up camp and washing off a bit in the river—probably not the smartest idea given the aforementioned leeches, but our first opportunity of the trip, which made it too irresistible—I bundled up in all the layers I had in preparation for a very cold night, and waited for our guide to cook the rice and lentils over the campfire. After a short, pre-dinner nap in my sleeping bag back in my solo tent, I joined the boys by the fire. Once the food was ready, we ate off a flipped over pot lid that served as a communal plate, as there were no banana leaves surrounding the campsite. Although it definitely wasn’t enough food, it was nice to have a warm meal before turning in for the evening.

That night was so cold that the guys had offered to share the big tent with our fellow traveler, as he was just sleeping out in the open. I got the single tent with all my layers, thick socks and a hot water bottle full of “ranompango” (burnt rice water), so I was thankfully warm enough. The guide was complaining the next morning that his tent had been drafty and cold during the night. Additionally, he claimed that he had a fever, though I’m not sure if he was just confusing a natural bodily reaction to the cold weather of shivering with that of fever chills. Nevertheless, he looked pretty pathetic shaking and whimpering as he stoked the breakfast fire, so I offered him some ibuprofen and an extra Mefloquine tablet I had, just in case it was Malaria or an actual fever. The offering was as much to quiet him down and placate him as anything else. Most Malagasy I have come across fortunately (or sometimes unfortunately if they keep asking you for medication) have a good amount of faith in western biomedicine.

After a few quick spoonfuls of burnt rice and cold lentils for breakfast, we headed off down the mountain. For the first half of the morning, I was confused as to our location on the peak, because we seemed to be going uphill more so than down. We crossed mud pond after mud pond, which were infested with leeches as we were still in the dense section of the forest. I was wearing a pair of Tom’s socks under my Tevas, as the sores on my feet from my sandal straps had gotten pretty bad. Although it wasn’t the most comfortable (nor fashionable) thing to be wearing wet, muddy, squishy socks, it protected my blisters and even helped a little with the leeches, though a few still tried to bite through the socks and one even ended up on my stomach somehow.

After a late morning snack of leftover rice and peanut butter (since we wouldn’t get to our lunch town until 2) we hiked on. After about another hour we finally reached the path dropping down towards our afternoon destination. For the moment, it was a relief to be out of the leech-infested mud puddles, to be going downhill, and to have beautiful vistas of the river and town below. We could even see the road winding back north up towards Antalaha. We soon unfortunately discovered that the maintenance of the trail was practically non-existent and the drizzly morning and past few days of rainfall had made the steep path down, one slippery, messy, red mudslide.

Because the mud was caked on the bottom of my shoes and probably because I was very exhausted at the point, I must have slipped and fallen over a dozen times. Luckily the landings were soft though, as there were no more rocks, but rather a lot of mud and grass. I was so tired and frustrated at the slippery path and my feet were hurting so badly that I had a small meltdown midway in our descent down the mountain. At around 2pm we finally reached the village of Ampokafo, where the path coming directly from Antalaha to Maroansetra intersects with the longer, circuitous path cutting through the forest from Cap Est, which we had taken. After stopping at a nearby stream to wash off all the mud caked on our shoes and pants, we headed to a “hotely” to have lunch.

I had my third serving of rice for the day, and I actually finished the whole plate (which is saying something for the huge quantities of rice they pile on those plates) along with some boiled greens, “sakay” and peanut butter. That was my first time ever finishing a full Malagasy plate of rice, and I kind of forced myself to do it since I was sure I hadn’t been taking in enough calories for the ridiculous amount of calories we were probably expending hiking over 8 hours each day on a challenging trail with heavy packs on our backs.

Our guide went to eat lunch at a church party in the center of town and probably tried to sell some of his pink medicine to the attendees while he was there. After he returned, we headed down the trail to the village where we would spend the night. I was reluctant to stand up on my feet again, but the guide promised we’d arrive at our destination by 4pm and the trail was supposed to be easy from here on out. We’d only have a few more rivers to cross and one more short, steep section.

The trail was thankfully much easier and still quite beautiful, as we looked out over the river down below, studded with big, round boulders and bordered by small sections of protected forest and small, Malagasy dwellings and rice paddies. There were still tall mountains on either side of the path, but our trail stayed mostly flat as it meandered along the lower part of the valley. Since we were no longer inside the national park, the deforestation along the hillsides was much more prevalent and depressing to see. All of the forest on the lower half of the mountains and most of it on the steeper mid-sections had been cleared by the surrounding villages for firewood, farming, building houses and possibly the rosewood trade. Only the very steepest sections of the top halves of the peaks were left sparsely blanketed with trees. It was disheartening to think that, with the continuously growing population and hence growing need for food, fuel and money, the mountaintops not protected by park boundaries would probably be completely bare in a matter of a couple years.

Around 4:30 in the afternoon we finally reached the village where we would spend the night. Though the trail through the park had been spectacularly beautiful and memorable, it was a relief to now feel 99% sure that I would make it out of this expedition alive. Back in the forest, I hadn’t been so sure—often worrying that I might slip and kill myself or tumble down the mountain or be eaten alive by mosquitoes and leeches. We would now be passing villages all along with trail, which promised to be much flatter and well cleared. Only a few fording of rivers left!

Before dinner we chatted with some of the young men hanging out next to the house of the family in whose yard we were camping. They all looked to be in their early teens, yet only one or two of them were still in school. We asked where the nearest CEG (junior high school) was, and they responded in Ampokafo, which was a two hour hike back where we came from. The nearest lycee (high school) was in Antalaha or Maroansetra. Antalaha was now a good few days hike from where we were now, and Maroansetra was still another one and a half days in the other direction. So it was understandable that only a few of them would continue past primary school and even fewer past middle school and on into high school, especially if they didn’t have any relatives to house them in Antalaha or Maroansetra.

The kids who weren’t in school worked in the rice fields and vanilla and coffee businesses. They also openly admitted that they looked for money cutting down and/or transporting Rosewood. According to the locals, one large tree could fetch them around 80,000 Ariary (about 40USD) or more, quite a good chunk of money for someone so low down on the chain of production. It was widely known among the locals that there are a lot of “patrons” in Antalaha looking to purchase rosewood for exportation, and we heard many stories of people floating logs of rosewood down the river as a way of transporting them from the forests of Masoala up towards Antalaha.

After my fourth plate of rice for the day (a personal record!), along with some lentils and the squash like vegetable we had found in the forest, we chatted with the guide about horoscopes (his favorite topic) and then hit the sack. The next morning, we had a rainy and late start. I struggled to hike down the slippery, steep hill with my sore feet to reach the W.C. while the guide went to search for firewood. This village was unusually devoid of early risers, so it was another hour before the guide was able to get the cookfire going for a breakfast of boiled cassava and leftover lentils and rice. I skipped the cassava, as it is my least favorite food in Madagascar and ate the rice that the guys couldn’t finish since they were so full of from the tasteless, starchy cassava.

It was only at 8:30 that we finally packed up and left town. The guide assured us that, since the road was easy from here on out, we would have no trouble reaching our destination for the day. The path wandered in and out of the small remaining sections of the park for the rest of the morning. Since the path was easy and the guide kept telling us that we had plenty of time, I stopped frequently to catch up on picture taking that I hadn’t done much of during the first half of the trip, since I was always trying to catch up with my two, strong, male hiking partners.

Unfortunately we still had quite a bit of river crossings left, some of which were quite deep and fast-moving. The additional maneuvering on slippery rocks was becoming increasingly painful for my blister-covered feet. I felt better about the guide having to help me across the rapids, though, when I saw a young Malagasy woman struggling to cross one of the rivers while two young men held her hands and carried her belongings across for her. The path was still quite muddy as we passed more rice fields and patches of heavily forested, poorly maintained trail.

At around 11:30 we passed a small village with “hotelies.” The guide offered us the option of stopping to have lunch or to keep going to another village two hours down the road, where he claimed there were better “hotely” options. I wasn’t hungry yet but quite exhausted and in a lot of pain from my sandals. So we went on, but took a short break a little ways down the road so I could rest my feet. The trail wound on and on through forested and deforested area and sections of rice fields. I started to get extremely frustrated at how much longer this was taking than expected and at how muddy and slippery the path remained.

We finally reached our destination for lunch around 3:30. Since we were way behind schedule, according to the guide, to reach Nahavana by evening, the town where we were supposed to catch the boat to Maroansetra the next morning, he made us gulp down our rice in ten minutes and get right back on the road. I was less than happy about the prospect of another three hours of walking, but he wanted to make sure we had a chance of catching the one canoe that left first thing in the morning from Nahavana. Otherwise, we’d have to walk an extra 10km to catch a boat down the river to Maroansetra.

Although the path was dry and flattened out, making it much easier than any of the previous hiking we had done, we walked on and on and didn’t make it to our evening destination until a good hour after dusk. One of the young porters from Sambava that we had happened to meet along the trail who was a friend of our guides actually caught up with us in the town a few km outside of Nahavana and offered us a place to pitch our tents next to his compound on the edge of the village. He was a very nice guy, and we chatted about Sambava and his work with the vanilla trade along the route from Antalaha to Maroansetra. Our camping spot was great as well, as there was live fencing all around the yard and it was right next to the beach, so we could hear the waves crashing and the wind blowing through the palms as we set up our tents.

The guide and our new friend decided to go out for some drinks and dinner, but Tom and I were so exhausted that we just had a few snacks and went to sleep. Unfortunately, we found out as we were coming into Nahavana that there were no canoes leaving from that point in the morning to head to Maroansetra, because the seas had been rough the past couple days and part of the route went along the ocean. It wasn’t safe enough, so we would have to hike the extra 10km the next day anyway to get to the village with river access and canoes running all day back and forth between Maroansetra. I was greatly disappointed that we would have to walk again for another few hours the next day, as my body was so beat up from the past couple of days from hiking through the forest and carrying the heavy pack.

Unfortunately the next morning was quite cold and rainy, and so we had a couple hours of wet hiking to look forward to after a quick breakfast in Nahavana. I was so ready to be done with walking that I powered through the next few hours while Tom and the guide stopped to take a break in the middle. I figured they would catch up with me anyway, since they were usually so much faster than me, but I ended up on my own for the remainder of the hike as the trail wound up into a small forested, protected park area and then back down along the coast to the beach and out to the village on the banks of the river that headed towards Maroansetra. There were many more people on this section of the trail, including Malagasy day travelers and quite a few white tourists (mostly French), who I speculated probably went on the easier trail coming directly from Antalaha or were on day trips leaving out of Maroansetra.

After grabbing a “lakana” for a little more expensive than we had expected—they were taking advantage of low supply of boats and high demand of travelers that day—we were sitting in a soggy, wooden canoe on our way through the drizzle to Maroansetra at last! As the river channel meandered past flooded rice paddies and other canoes transporting cargo and passengers in the rain, I reflected on how challenging life must be for farmers in the Maroansetra area. The walking paths seemed either very wet or non-existent, so most transport relied on the hand-made wooden canoes. Once we arrived at the port, we walked thirty more minutes through the rain to the center of town and found a cheap-ish hotel where we could finally put down our stuff and get out of the wet weather.

Though we didn’t have hot water, it was still amazing to be able to wash off all the mud and sweat from the past week and to hang up all our clothes to “dry out” in the damp air of Maroansetra. After a quick lunch, we met up with the guide to pay him his fee for the trip. I gave him a little extra, because I don’t think I would have been able to make it across all the rivers without his help. He then showed us to the ANGAP office, where we turned in our guide evaluations and then parted ways. Since Tom had to make it back down to Tana as soon as possible, he went in search of “taxi brousses” heading down to Tamatave and made a reservation for the earliest one, leaving Thursday morning from Maroansetra. The ride sounded like quite the adventure, as the road from Maroansetra down to Mananara is notoriously bad. The trip down to Tamatave was projected to take two or more days, even though the geographic distance between Maroansetra and Tamatave really isn’t that far. The road is just that bad. I was looking to the short and easy flight I had booked direct from Maroansetra back to Sambava.

With our time left in Maroansetra, we did a little souvenir shopping and met up with the Peace Corps environment volunteer in the area doing work with an NGO on income-generating activities relating to a local silkworm project as well as reforestation and improved rice farming techniques. We also stumbled across a fancy resort down by the beach whose owner happened to be a French lady who had spent thirty years in California and loved Peace Corps volunteers. She invited us back to her resort that evening for drinks and dinner, so she could hear all about our adventures in Masoala.

It was something else to end our long, treacherous journey through the muddy forest with an evening of wine and a fancy three-course dinner in a swanky hotel with several older French ladies and their friends, who included an American scientist doing research on the "Fosa" in the forests around Maroansetra. Everyone we met that evening was wonderfully nice to talk to and I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Maroansetra, but I was ready to go back to the warmer and drier climate up at my site near Sambava and to relax in my house and not have to walk around for several days.